TO LIVE Movie Review

Huozhe

The fifth feature film from China's Zhang Yimou follows the lives and fortunes of one family—the weak but adaptable Fugui (Ge You), his strong-willed wife Jiazhen (Gong Li), and their young daughter and son—from pre-revolutionary China in the 1940s through the Cultural revolution of the 1960s. Fugui's loss of the family fortune to gambling becomes a life-saving blessing when the communists assume power, though the family must struggle to survive the increasingly violent and unpredictable winds of change brought about by the “Great Leap Forward.” Zhang's To Live is a sweeping epic about an ordinary family's struggle in extraordinary times. Intimate in focus but awesome in its breadth, the film's day-to-day events—humorous and tragic—compound into a saga of the human spirit that sneaks up on you gently, and becomes overwhelmingly moving in its final scenes. Zhang has become a master not only of story structure and visual nuance, but of coaxing natural and startlingly spontaneous performances from his casts. (A hospital sequence involving arrogant bureaucrats, an old, starving doctor, and steamed buns is a brilliantly orchestrated example of comedy horribly but inevitably evolving into tragedy—the scene's complex perfection is typical of Zhang.) To Live is additional proof (if any is needed) that Zhang Yimou is one of the world's greatest living filmmakers. Grand Jury Prize and Award for Best Actor (Ge You), Cannes Film Festival.

NEXT STOP … The Story of Qiu Ju, Farewell My Concubine, The Blue Kite

1994 130m/C CH Ge You, Gong Li, Niu Ben, Guo Tao, Jiang Wu; D: Zhang Yimou; W: Lu Wei, Yu Hua; C: Lu Yue; M: Zhao Jiping. British Academy Awards ‘94: Best Foreign Film; Cannes Film Festival ‘94: Best Actor (You), Grand Jury Prize; Nominations: Golden Globe Awards ‘95: Best Foreign Film. VHS, LV HMK, IME